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- Salesforce announces $5.66 billion deal for Braze, sending BRZE stock soaring 50%
Salesforce agreed to buy customer engagement platform Braze for about $5.66 billion, with Braze Class A holders receiving $47.50 in cash per share and closing expected in fiscal 2028, according to a Salesforce blog. Salesforce shares slipped about 1% Tuesday morning, while BRZE soared more than 50% after a brief premarket halt, from a $30.04 close on Monday. Braze makes AI marketing tools for managing customer data and messaging, and CEO Bill Magnuson said Salesforce's platform will help the company innovate faster.
- Is Adobe A Better Way Than Salesforce To Own AI Software Growth?
Salesforce and Adobe both expect AI to speed up subscription software growth, but they charge differently: Salesforce premium editions cost 60% to 80% more than lower tiers, while Adobe has held off on price rises to win users. Salesforce reports revenue under contract for the next twelve months up 14%, and its AI agent product Agentforce has reached $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue; Adobe counts more than 1 billion monthly users, up over 20%, and its AI-first products have passed $650 million in annual recurring revenue. Adobe trades at 13.6 times trailing earnings versus 20.9 times for Salesforce, with a 35.7% operating margin against 21.5%, and grows slightly faster (12.0% versus 11.2%). Salesforce is executing a $25 billion share buyback and plans to hire 1,200 account executives, while its total debt equals 20.6% of market value, compared with 6.8% for Adobe.
- Berkshire Hathaway Has Piled $930 Million Into This Stock Since Its IPO. Should Investors Follow?
Berkshire Hathaway, under CEO Greg Abel, bought $600 million of the Bending Spoons IPO in July, when the Milan-based company raised $1.68 billion at a valuation of about $18 billion, and later added $330 million in a private placement for a 4% stake. The article links Bending Spoons' model of acquiring, overhauling and holding software businesses to Berkshire's long-term approach, citing an operating margin that rose to 34% from 32% and cash from operations that nearly tripled to $254 million last quarter. It flags $4.09 billion in net debt, 2.4 times adjusted EBITDA, as a risk as the cost of capital rises. Bending Spoons aims for an internal rate of return of 65% levered and 25% unlevered, and management says it has identified more than 1,000 potential acquisition targets.
- Bending Spoons wants to revive software castoffs. Berkshire is backing the plan
Bending Spoons, a Milan-based holding company that listed on Nasdaq, is buying older software businesses that have fallen out of favor amid the AI boom. Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a $330 million stake this week, bringing its total investment to over $900 million; the stock jumped 41% before giving back some gains, leaving a market cap of about $30 billion. The company agreed to buy Airtable for about $1.3 billion, almost 90% below its late-2021 peak valuation, and a large portion of Airtable's pre-acquisition team will leave with substantial separation packages. The article links these moves to the 'SaaSpocalypse,' as AI agents displace traditional software-as-a-service products. Unlike private equity firms, Bending Spoons aims to hold and profit from the businesses it buys rather than sell them.
- Apple, Salesforce Lead Five Stocks Near Buy Points
- 5 big analyst AI moves: Meta gets Street-high PT; Salesforce double upgraded
Truist raised its price target on Meta to $1,000 from $763, matching Wells Fargo as the highest on Wall Street, citing early traction for its Muse AI agent, and kept a Buy rating. Meta shares have risen 21% since Muse launched, versus a 2% gain for the S&P 500, and Truist expects third-quarter revenue of $63.9 billion, up 25% year over year. BofA double-upgraded Salesforce to Buy from Underperform and lifted its target to $285 from $160, arguing AI should deepen enterprise dependence on such platforms, though small AI revenues and slower-than-expected adoption remain the main near-term risk. Barclays downgraded Dell, HPE and NetApp to Equal Weight from Overweight, saying valuations have run ahead of any meaningful enterprise AI inflection, and cut its Dell target to $574 from $603. Barclays strategist Emmanuel Cau says hot U.S. inflation data, Middle East tensions and a chip-stock selloff are testing the market's upside, though he attributes much of the weakness to positioning rather than fundamentals.
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- Anthropic in talks for second multibillion-dollar Nscale deal - CNBC
Anthropic is in talks with U.K.-based Nscale for a second multibillion-dollar deal to lease computing capacity at a U.S. site, according to CNBC, citing a person familiar with the matter. The agreement would reportedly cover a second 460-megawatt data center at the West Virginia site of an initial deal announced in August, and could be worth about $45 billion. Competitors CoreWeave and Nebius saw their shares fall 28% and 27%, respectively, over the past month. The Telegraph reported that Microsoft pulled out of a deal to anchor an Nscale data center outside London due to power grid connection delays, and Nscale, which filed to go public on the NYSE in September, is reportedly delaying those plans amid valuation concerns in the sector.
- US moves to sell seized Russian 'shadow fleet' oil tankers
The U.S. government will allow sanctioned tankers from Russia's 'shadow fleet' to be sold to investors so they can return to legal shipping, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a Citadel Securities event in New York. Buyers will refit idle vessels to carry non-sanctioned oil, and Wright stressed this is a change of ownership and operating status, not simply lifting restrictions. U.S. officials estimate the global shadow fleet includes about 1,600 tankers, and the mechanism could bring dozens or even hundreds of them back into service. The move comes amid an unfinished war with Iran that has nearly shut the Strait of Hormuz, pushing the cost of shipping oil from the Persian Gulf to East Asia more than sixfold above pre-war levels. A KSE Institute study from June 2026 found that 862 shadow fleet tankers have carried Russian oil since early 2023, with 695 still active between May 2025 and May 2026.
- What Is Twilio’s (TWLO) Economic Moat, and Is It Widening or Narrowing?
Twilio (TWLO) moves messages and calls for other companies, and the article assesses whether its economic moat is widening or narrowing. Its advantages include carrier relationships, phone numbers and country-level regulatory approvals, plus high switching costs because messaging code is embedded in customers' applications. However, messages are essentially a commodity, with operating profit at just 7.83% of revenue because carriers take a cut, and revenue growth has settled at 22.00% over the latest three months. Shares closed at $257.29 on October 19, up 76.7% over six months and 136% over a year, and trade at 43.67 times analysts' expectations for next year. The article concludes the moat is real, narrow and roughly holding rather than widening, and that operating margin is the metric to watch.
- Can MongoDB (MDB) Hold Its Guidance After Losing Its Chief Executive?
MongoDB (MDB) closed at $348.69 on October 19 and is up 32% over six months. CEO Chirantan Desai left on September 28 to join Meta, and shares fell about 15% that day, even though the company reaffirmed its guidance of $2.99-$3.03 billion in revenue for the year to January. That guidance implies about 22% growth, below the 30.50% revenue growth of the prior quarter, and the balance sheet carries almost no debt, so the article argues the forecast can be held. Dev Ittycheria, who ran the company from 2014 until last year, has returned as interim CEO while the board searches. The article says the market reacted to less certainty about the outlook rather than an error, and notes that with a 3.68% operating margin a small miss would move earnings sharply, while the shares trade at 70.42 times expected next-year earnings.
- AI jitters clobber South Korea's Elice as stock sinks 32% in trading debut
Shares of South Korean data center provider Elice (0158S0.KQ) plunged 32% on their first trading day. Elice, which rents out AI compute capacity, raised about $151 million, with demand oversubscribing the IPO roughly 400 times. The sharp drop reflected investor worries about valuations and long-term profitability, especially if hyperscalers cut spending or borrowing costs rise further. The sell-off also tied into concerns about neocloud providers, after a viral chart of rising bond yields at Nvidia-backed CoreWeave (CRWV) highlighted its debt-heavy balance sheet; CoreWeave rebounded Tuesday after a 25% drop last week. HSBC analyst Abhishek Shukla set a $39 price target on CoreWeave, about 34% below current trading levels.
- Palo Alto Networks (PANW) Pays a Large Part of Its Wage Bill in Stock. What Does That Do to Profit?
Palo Alto Networks (PANW) closed at $346.95 on October 19 and has returned 104.62% over six months. Revenue rose 34.50% last quarter, yet reported profit was only $307 million on $11.48 billion of revenue. Share-based compensation and related charges reached $1.71 billion in the last fiscal year, more than double operating profit, while operating cash flow hit $4.55 billion. The article argues that stock-paid wages are still a real cost because they dilute existing shareholders. At 94.34 times analysts' next-year earnings estimates, the valuation depends on whether share-based pay is added back, since the multiple relies on adjusted earnings rather than reported profit.
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